What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to perceive, understand, and manage our emotions and others emotions.
So you are thinking… we do that everyday? Some people though you might have noticed do it better than others. My husband is very good at this thankfully, self mastery though has always been part of his self-care. Indeed some people spend decades trying to master this ability, like monks! I am not sure I will ever be a master at this but I am pleased with my growth. I want you all to be pleased with your improved emotional intelligence too!
The first step is really seeing your emotions!
In a world so busy with distractions and to do lists it can be hard to sit and allow yourself to feel your emotions. I am by no means an expert at any of this. As a mother of many and a part of many large communities I am often in a position to see and use emotional intelligence and help others improve their emotional intelligence. I am also self admittedly a creature of feels. I have them, big time! Mostly they inspire me to write, learn, grow, and help others. Sometimes though they inspire me right into the bathtub to cry! Part of identifying emotions is taking the time to do so.
A wise friend shared this list of emotions with me and it helps one to first identify the actually emotion:
Finding the emotion then helps me as an adult now figure out just where the feeling is coming from. For most adults we have a lot of baggage attached to emotion. Working through those past issues is important. For children, their feels tend to be in the moment, if they can identify them quickly, understand them, they have a change manage them. Of course there are adults who can’t do this, or can’t always do this, so we have to be sure to allow kids to have their bad days too. After all, kids brains are not even fully formed yet. Still, we can set them up for success by helping them identify what they are feeling.
She is 6 and sometimes more emotionally intelligent than I am!
I love attachment parenting, crunchy parenting, and peaceful parenting. (What is Crunchy Parenting?) These choices take a lot of effort as it isn’t something most of us where raised with. I think emotional intelligence helps a great deal with being able thrive when you have chosen these parenting styles. I also know the effort pays off!
Last night something happened that I wanted to be sure to share here. Our youngest 6 year old daughter noticed she was having feelings about the new baby in the house (We are grandparents!) She noticed the baby was getting more attention than she was, this caused big feels! Rory you are amazing and you inspire me, I love you always.
At 6 she was able to figure out she was feeling lonely in a house of 9 people. To my shock, she was also able to figure out that part of the issue was that she had been playing alone on a computer game a lot lately. She took responsibility for that! She then figured out what action she wanted to take to try to feel differently.
The baby was getting a lot of cuddles, so perhaps cuddles would help her. She then went around the house to all her people only to discover everyone was busy, this created more feels. She got brave and told her older sister about her needing cuddles and how everyone was busy, and her sister, having her hands full with baby, took little sister to me to talk about it. I was busy, but not too busy, never too busy, for needs. I am so incredibly impressed by her ability to walk her way through all of those steps on her own.
Needless to say, there are more cuddles in her future.
The 3 “simple” steps to Emotional Intelligence
- Identify the emotions behind the feelings
- Understand the emotion and where it is coming from.
- Take action to manage the emotions.
These sound simple enough, but it really just isn’t. Someone I know outside of family was hurting my feelings over and over again. I took this as a “me” issue because they kept doing it despite being sorry. Surely I was doing something to cause it right? I was having feelings but struggling to figure out the emotions. Thank you John Macdonald for all the feels and the hard lessons. You will always be Mal to me. It makes me giggle knowing all issues Mal in FireFly had and yours…. Be well.
Once I took the time to find the emotions behind the big feelings, I saw the triggers, and expressed what was happening, and while I couldn’t stop this person from treating me that way, I could ask them to adjust things. In the end, they were sorry, but seemed to not have any motivation to change so I had to take action myself, and it was to walk away. While part of having high emotional intelligence is being able to influence others, (in hopes of helping them or helping a group attain a goal), sometimes all you can really do is change your own behavior, find other ways to meet needs.
Resources to help improve your or child’s emotional intelligence:
We got this book system for improving emotional intelligence by identifying feelings for our gifted child. Many gifted brilliant children struggle socially because they struggle with emotional intelligence.
Take a free emotional intelligence quiz and see how skilled you are or where you could improve your emotional intelligence.
